Who owns a building: LLCs, the owner of record and the beneficial owner

How to find who owns a New York City building — the deed, HPD's registration, the Department of State's registry — why so many owners are LLCs, the difference between the owner of record and the beneficial owner, and how BlockLot groups an owner's buildings.

Every building in New York City has an owner whose name is a matter of public record — but the name on the record is often a company with no people in it that anyone can see. This guide follows the records the City and the State keep, in the order a reader can search them, and says what each one names and what it leaves out.

The owner of record

The owner of record is the person or company the public record names as the owner: the grantee of the latest deed the City Register recorded. In Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens the deed is in ACRIS; on Staten Island the Richmond County Clerk keeps it. The Department of Finance asks that the names on a tax bill match the names on the deed, and an owner updates them, and the mailing address the bills go to, online or with its property information update form.

The owner on the tax roll — BlockLot's Roll owner — is the name the Department of Finance prints on its assessment roll and tax bill. It usually matches the deed, but it lags: the roll is written once a year, so a building sold in March can carry the seller's name until the next roll. BlockLot shows the roll's name and the latest deed side by side for that reason, and where they differ it trusts the deed.

Why so many owners are LLCs

A limited liability company, or LLC, is a company whose owners — its members — are not personally liable for its debts. In New York it is formed by filing articles of organization with the Department of State, which must give the company's name, the county of its office and the Secretary of State as its agent for legal papers, but need not name a single member or manager. Owners of larger buildings commonly hold each one in its own LLC, so that one building's debts and lawsuits stay with that building.

How common that is depends on the building. By BlockLot Intelligence's count of the names on the City's tax roll, an LLC holds 4.7% of one- and two-family homes, but 59.4% of apartment buildings with twenty or more homes and 55.5% of office buildings:

Who owns each kind of building

Building	LLC	Other
1–2 family homes	4.7%	6.2%
3–5 apartments	18.9%	8.9%
6–19 apartments	58.1%	22.6%
20+ apartments	59.4%	33.0%
Condo homes	17.6%	12.2%
Offices	55.5%	28.4%
Stores	55.1%	28.7%
Industrial	56.8%	30.7%

Privately owned lots by the owner's name on the City's tax roll: an LLC, or another company, partnership, trust or board (other). The rest are owned by people. Government owners and co-op buildings are left out. Apartment buildings are sized by their homes on PLUTO; industrial is factories and warehouses. BlockLot Intelligence, computed October 10, 2026.

The table reads the owner's name, not a registry: a name ending in LLC is counted as an LLC, a name carrying INC, CORP, LP, TRUST or a similar word as another company, partnership, trust or board, and the rest as people. Checked against HPD's own record of who owns registered rental buildings, the reading agrees on nine buildings in ten. For condominium apartments it gives 17.6%; the City Comptroller, in a 2024 report drawn from the Department of Finance's records, put the share of condominium units owned by LLCs at 18%.

Buying through an LLC has become far more common. Of the deeds with a price recorded in 2006, 9.3% went to an LLC; in 2025, 28.6%.

Deeds with a price, and the share bought by an LLC

Year	Deeds	Bought by an LLC
2025	32,178	28.6%
2024	30,071	26.4%
2023	29,252	25.5%
2022	41,844	22.2%
2021	40,838	18.8%
2020	25,553	21.4%
2019	34,255	24.1%
2018	36,864	25.4%
2017	39,040	23.8%
2016	38,652	25.9%
2015	38,931	27.1%
2014	36,697	26.1%
2013	37,763	24.0%
2012	33,044	20.6%
2011	31,036	16.5%
2010	32,444	13.6%
2009	29,019	11.4%
2008	39,904	12.4%
2007	48,937	11.0%
2006	55,361	9.3%

Deeds recorded in ACRIS each calendar year stating a price of $10,000 or more, each counted once, and the share whose buyer's name is an LLC's. Staten Island's deeds are recorded by the Richmond County Clerk and are not here. BlockLot Intelligence, computed October 10, 2026.

The records that name who stands behind a company

The records a reader can search, from the deed to the people who signed for the company.

The deed. It names the grantee and gives an address for it. The deed itself is signed by the grantor, but the documents recorded with a purchase — the mortgage, an assignment, a power of attorney — are signed for the buying company by a person whose name and title appear on the signature page, and ACRIS shows their images.

The Department of State. Its corporation and business entity database lists each corporation and LLC with a DOS ID, the date it was formed or registered, where it was formed, its county, its status and an address for service of legal papers — and a registered agent, if it named one. PLUTO, Open Data and the registries explains those fields. The State keeps no list of an LLC's members or managers. Every two years an LLC files a biennial statement, but for an LLC it confirms only the address for legal papers; a corporation's statement also names its chief executive.

HPD's registration. Every building of three or more homes, and every one- or two-family house its owner does not live in, must register with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development each year. A corporation that owns one must list its officers and anyone holding more than a quarter of it, and every registration names a managing agent for a building of three or more homes. HPD publishes the names as Open Data — the most direct public link from a company to people.

The transfer-tax return. Since May 18, 2015 the City's transfer-tax return has asked a buyer or seller that is an LLC to identify its members; since September 13, 2019 State law has required an LLC buying or selling a building of one to four homes to attach a member list naming all its members, managers and other authorized persons, tracing any member that is itself a company to the people behind it. The City treats that information as confidential tax information: it is filed, not published.

A worked example. The Empire State Building's owner of record is ESRT EMPIRE STATE BUILDING, L.L.C., by a deed the City Register recorded on October 8, 2013. The Department of State lists it under DOS ID 4456473 as a company formed in Delaware and registered to do business in New York on September 10, 2013, with its address for legal papers in care of Corporation Service Company in Albany, an address tens of thousands of companies share. Neither record names a person, and the building is commercial, so it has no HPD registration.

The one public hint of the group behind it is on the deed, which gives the buyer's mailing address in care of Empire State Realty Trust, Inc. — a care-of line like that is often the clearest public sign of an LLC's parent, and it is only as current as the deed.

Owner of record and beneficial owner

The beneficial owner is the person who in the end owns or controls the company on the deed. Federal rules define it as anyone who, directly or indirectly, exercises substantial control over a company or owns or controls at least a quarter of it; New York's law borrows the same definition. An owner of record can be an LLC whose only member is another LLC, owned in turn by a partnership: the beneficial owners are the people at the end of that chain.

New York's LLC Transparency Act (Chapter 772 of 2023) created a database of beneficial owners at the Department of State, in force from January 1, 2026. Because the law defines who must report by reference to the federal rules, and those rules were narrowed in March 2025, it now covers only LLCs formed in another country and registered to do business in New York; LLCs formed in New York or another state do not report. A 2025 bill to write New York's own, broader definitions into the law was vetoed in December 2025. The reports are confidential by law: the State may share them with government and law enforcement, not with the public.

The federal Corporate Transparency Act has followed the same path: since March 26, 2025 companies formed in the United States have been exempt from reporting their beneficial owners to the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and the exemption was made final in August 2026. None of these reports is public. For a building owned by an American LLC, then, the public record names the company and, at best, the people HPD's registration and the signed documents name.

How BlockLot groups an owner's buildings

An owner group is BlockLot's reading of which companies and people act as one owner — our inference from the public record, not a fact any agency states. BlockLot reads who holds each building from the latest recorded deed, then joins companies and people only on evidence that ties them together: a company's own state filing naming a person to receive its legal papers; a company whose registered office is a building that person owns; a person deeding a building for a nominal price to a company at the same address; an HPD registration naming the person as the company's head officer or owner, where another record backs it up; a small shared registered office; or deeds sent in care of the same parent company.

A shared mailing address, a permit filing or a managing agent's name is shown as a connection to check, never counted as common ownership, and a name alone never joins buildings. Addresses that hundreds of companies use — registered-agent firms, law offices, virtual offices — are left out, and a group that would grow past a few hundred buildings is withheld as more likely a bad link than one owner. Condominium units count once as their building. Each group says which kind of evidence joined it; treat every link as a lead to check on the deed.

Where you see this in BlockLot

A building's Owner card shows the roll owner, the mailing address on the latest deed and, for a company owner, its Department of State registration; the portfolio card lists the owner group's other buildings and what joined them. Area pages count lots by kind of owner — LLCs, other companies, individuals, government — and by owner group.

The Owner card: the name on the tax roll, and the company's registration with the Department of State.
The owner of record on the tax roll
Its Department of State registration

Questions people ask

How do I find out who owns a building in New York City? Look up the latest deed in ACRIS by borough, block and lot: its grantee is the owner of record. On Staten Island the Richmond County Clerk keeps the deeds. The tax bill's owner name, on the Department of Finance's property records, usually matches.

How do I find out who is behind an LLC? The Department of State's database gives the LLC's formation date, where it was formed and an address for legal papers, but not its members. For a rental building, HPD's registration names the officers and managing agent; the signature pages of mortgages and other documents in ACRIS name the person who signed for the company.

Are LLC members public in New York? No. Articles of organization need not name them, and the member lists filed with transfer-tax returns and the beneficial ownership reports under the LLC Transparency Act are confidential.

What is the difference between the owner of record and the beneficial owner? The owner of record is whoever the recorded deed names — often a company. The beneficial owner is the person who ultimately owns or controls that company, with a quarter or more of it or substantial control.

Does the LLC Transparency Act apply to my LLC? Since January 1, 2026 it applies only to LLCs formed outside the United States and registered to do business in New York, which must report their beneficial owners to the Department of State in confidence. LLCs formed in New York or another state are exempt.

Why does the tax bill show a different owner from the deed? The roll is written once a year and lags a sale; the deed is recorded within days. The Department of Finance updates the bill's name when an owner asks, and the new roll picks up the deed.

Deeds in New York City: the kinds of deed, and grantor and grantee — What a deed is, the kinds New York law describes — bargain and sale, quitclaim, executor's, referee's — transfer-on-death and life estate deeds, who the grantor and grantee are, and what party 1 and party 2 mean on any document in ACRIS.
ACRIS and the City Register: where deeds and mortgages are recorded — What the Office of the City Register records, what ACRIS is and how to search it, how long a deed or mortgage takes to reach the record, what is not in ACRIS — Staten Island, lis pendens, records before 1966 — and how owners can be alerted when something is recorded against their property.
Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) — What New York City's housing agency does — enforcing the Housing Maintenance Code, financing affordable homes, running the lotteries and Section 8 — and how every rental building must register with HPD each year, naming its owner and a managing agent.
PLUTO, NYC Open Data and the public registries behind a property — What NYC Open Data is, what City Planning's PLUTO lot file holds and where its fields come from, how city-owned land is marked, what the New York Department of State's business registry says about the companies that own buildings — and how BlockLot uses each.
Absentee owners, owner-occupied homes and owners' mailing addresses — What "absentee owner" means in New York City property records, where an owner's mailing address comes from, which rules turn on whether an owner lives in the home — HPD registration, STAR, the senior exemption, the co-op and condo abatement, Good Cause Eviction — and how far a deed's address can be trusted.
Co-ops and condominiums: what you own, boards, flip taxes, sponsors and taxes — The difference between a New York City co-op and a condominium — shares and a proprietary lease against a unit you own outright — how boards, offering plans, sponsors and flip taxes work, how each is taxed, and how each shows up in the public record.
Ground leases, net leases and recorded memoranda of lease — What a ground lease is and who owns what under one, how a net lease shifts a building's costs to its tenant, why long leases are recorded in ACRIS as memoranda of lease, how transfer and property taxes treat leases, and what Battery Park City shows about all of it.

Sources

By BlockLot. Reviewed October 9, 2026. Figures by BlockLot Intelligence, computed from public data on October 11, 2026. This page explains the rules in general; it is not legal or tax advice. For a decision about a specific property, check the official source or ask a professional. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.